The Bearsted Medical Practice provides primary medical care during week-day surgery hours for patients in the Bearsted area of Maidstone in Kent. The practice has eight general practitioners (GPs), who form the registered partnership. The services are commissioned by the West Kent Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG).
We spoke with patients during our inspection, and they were all very complimentary about the services they received from the practice. We received many positive comments from the patients who had completed comment cards prior to our inspection. They all expressed a high level of satisfaction with the practice and staff. We spoke with the Patient Participation Group (PPG) representative, who emphasised the support, engagement and effective working relationship the group had with the practice management team. Staff we spoke with told us the management team were very open and approachable and that there was good team working amongst all the staff at the practice.
Although the practice provided safe care, we suggested that some changes could be made in relation to how medicines were managed. We also suggested some changes could be made in the practice about the procedures used to monitor and manage infection control. In addition, we had concerns about insufficient documented information in relation to pre-employment checks for some of the staff. We found that whilst the staff at the practice had received training in safeguarding children, the records showed that only one member of staff had received training in safeguarding vulnerable adults. However, the staff we spoke with were able to demonstrate their knowledge of how to recognise suspected abuse and who to report any concerns to.
We found that the practice was well-led and provided caring, effective, and responsive services to a wide range of patient groups, including those of working age and recently retired, mothers with babies and younger children, older people, patients with long-term conditions and complex needs, people in vulnerable circumstances and those people experiencing poor mental health. We considered that the concerns we had regarding safety at the practice, had an impact across all patient groups.